


Life begins again....

by Gwynne



Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-07
Updated: 2011-07-07
Packaged: 2017-10-21 03:10:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/220257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gwynne/pseuds/Gwynne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Love takes many forms.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Life begins again....

Leonid had been a good man. Everyone said so. A good man, a good husband and father, a good worker at the bottle factory. She agreed with them, he’d been excellent with their four children. And he’d been kind, and caring, and a good husband in so many ways. Not quite all ways, of course, but you can’t have everything. He was a plain man with plain tastes, as he’d often said. Didn’t go for anything fussy. But, all in all, they’d had a good marriage.

When they came to tell her about the truck, and the accident, she’d been devastated. She was left with four children under ten, and the pension from the factory that didn’t stretch nearly far enough.

Everyone expected that, after her decent year of mourning, she’d marry again. But she was so busy with the children, and working part-time at her cousin’s restaurant to eke out the pension from the factory, and nobody caught her eye. Or her interest.

Finally, her children were all grown, flying out of the nest, her sons to the military, her daughters to marriage (and, because they’d learned their mother’s lesson well, to a partnership in a florist shop as well.) She was alone, unwanted, un-needed. She was facing long, empty years alone.

Until He came along.

He opened up a world that she’d never even dreamed about. He gave her a chance to spread her wings and try things she’d only read about, and things she’d barely dared to imagine. His wealth was part of it, to be honest – now she had access to the best of everything. But it was his open, almost greedy admiration that was the real attraction. And his rank swept her into contact with people who’d only been faces on the vid-news - now she rubbed shoulders with the highest of the high. And they admired her, they wanted her, they recognised her true worth.

It was heady, almost intoxicating.

She owed it all to Him. And she loved him, with a pure, clear-eyed, platonic love. She owed him so much. He’d swept her up and changed her from being a lonely aging woman to someone who was famous and sought-after, in the highest circles.

Ma Kosti loved Lord Vorkosigan, and would until the day she died. For valuing her work. For giving her the best ingredients, and a chance to try all the wildest recipes she’d ever imagined. For providing her with dozens of people to cook for every day and a huge, fine kitchen to do it in. For the chance to cook for the highest of High Vor, right up to the Emperor himself. For the investments she’d made with Lord Mark, which would make her a rich woman one day. And for giving her a job that was never dull. But most of all, for recognising her as an artist, for respecting her skill, and for giving her a whole new life as the most famous cook in Vorbarr Sultana.

She’d loved two men in her life. Leonid, the good husband and father, the plain man who liked good plain cooking. And Lord Auditor Vorkosigan, who wasn’t plain in any way at all, and who gloried in her wildest and most inventive offerings. Just when she thought her life was running down to long, dull years without purpose, she’d found a whole new career and identity. Life begins again, when you least expect it.

She’d learned that from Lord Vorkosigan, too.


End file.
